Joe looked blank. “Steampunk?”
“Yeah.” She ventured half a smile. “It’s a literary genre. Sort of Victoriana with a steam engine vibe. It’s also a look. A style. Men in fancy Edwardian waistcoats and women with leather bustiers.” Joe seemed more and more lost. “Think The Golden Compass. And the goggles, the eyepieces, look like those goggles the Arctic explorers wore in all those old photographs.”
“Goggles.” Joe had been looking up and to the right to envision what she was saying but suddenly his gaze dropped and locked with hers. He let out a harsh breath. His body was tight with tension. Every muscle was taut, delineated. She felt his shoulder muscles under her hands flex and harden. “Fuck,” he breathed.
“Pardon?”
“That bastard was wearing night vision goggles!”
“What?”
“You didn’t see a monster. You saw a guy in a ski mask with night vision. They are special eyepieces that magnify any ambient light and allow soldiers to see in the dark. It’s military hardware. It shouldn’t be in the hands of civilians. Did you strip naked?” he asked, mouth a thin grim line.
“Yes.” She shivered. “The room was dark but I guess he saw...everything.”
“Do you always keep the lights off in your bedroom?”
“No. I have a small reading light on my bedside table. I have a ceiling light—” She stopped, fingers digging into the hard muscles of his shoulders. “But you know all about my ceiling light because you put it up.”
“Yeah. Do you use it much at night?”
Isabel looked up, thought. “No. I mostly have my bedside light on.”
“So if someone’s been looking in on you, watching you, he expects the room to be dimly lit. If he’s been watching you, he’d expect you to be absolutely unaware of his existence. He can watch everything you do even in the dimmest light. Even in the dark. You went into your room and kept it dark and then used a flashlight that picked him out. And, by the way, that flashlight would have blinded him with night vision gear. It would have been like looking at the sun for him.”
Isabel stared at Joe, disturbed and queasy. “So...you think someone has been...watching me?” She swallowed bile. The idea was horrible.
Joe didn’t answer right away. When he spoke, his voice was firm. “Motion sensors are going up all around your house and you will have monitors. No one will ever sneak up on you again, guaranteed.”
“Thank you,” she whispered.
He nodded. “There’s something else you need to know, honey.”
The endearment just slipped out of him. Isabel didn’t think he even noticed. But she did. It didn’t feel like one of those words players used as a placeholder for a name. Joe knew her name. That honey had come out of his subconscious.
She watched his eyes. They were dark brown, with striations of a slightly lighter brown and they seemed to absorb the light. They were eyes that saw everything and betrayed a keen intelligence.
“What do I need to know?”
He studied her face for a moment longer and Isabel became uneasy. This was bad news coming and she’d had a lifetime’s worth of bad news lately.
“I got an email about you today.”
It felt like a punch to the stomach. All the wind went out of her. Her mouth fell open. “You got an email about me?” The bottom dropped out of her world. Nothing made any sense anymore. “What—what did it say?”
Was it a journalist looking for dirt? Was someone trying to ruin what was left of her life? But whoever had sent the email had sent it to Joe. Not to her. After the Massacre, Isabel had received all kinds of hate mail. There’d also been lots of condolence emails but also tons of political hate mail, to the effect that her godless family had gotten its just reward. Trolls crawling out of the woodwork to tear her down at her lowest point. She changed her email address and that was when she decided to move to Portland and change her name.
She’d known, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that if the hate mail continued, it was going kill her. She’d been half-dead and this wall of hatred, of vitriol was going to finish her off.
So she braced herself for whatever Joe was going to say. Somehow someone had latched on to the fact that Joe was being kind to her. And they wanted to destroy that. Leave her as alone as before.
She was ready for anything. For Joe to say that the email called her a whore, a bitch, a girl-child of privilege. That she wasn’t fit for decent folk.
That had been the baseline of the emails she’d received. An avalanche of them, happy that her father would never be president.
She held her breath.
“The email was simple,” he said. “It said protect Isabel.”
Her heart stuttered and her breath blew out in a whoosh. “It said what?”
“Protect Isabel. Two words. And we were unable to find the source. Not even Felicity was able to find the source and Felicity is the atom bomb of IT. Someone seriously does not want to be found. But that someone also wants me to protect you. To keep you from harm.”
Isabel watched his eyes and saw the truth of what he was saying. “I don’t understand. I can’t understand. There’s no one left in the world who cares what happens to me.”
Joe’s face turned even grimmer as he took her chin and turned her head to fully face him. “That’s not true, Isabel. Not anymore. I care what happens to you.”
And he kissed her.
* * *
Fuck fuck fuck!
The bitch made him! Kearns stumbled his way back to his vehicle at a fast walk, still half-blinded. Luckily, training kicked in.
He knew how to walk without calling attention to himself. He knew exactly how to go in a mile-eating stride that looked normal but was about 30 percent faster than a normal walk. He knew how to unobtrusively avoid sources of light. He knew how to obscure his face when the odd car drove by this late at night in this residential neighborhood.
He knew it all. He’d been trained to observe strict surveillance rules. He knew how it was done. He’d worked for the CIA’s National Clandestine Service for five years before being cashiered for some stupid anti-corruption rule. They’d trained him well. But the government didn’t pay well. What did they care if he accepted money on the side? It had nothing to do with his mission. The discharge still burned.
No one had ever made him before. Ever. Kearns was furious with himself that he’d been made by a freaking untrained girl. A cook, for fuck’s sake. A woman who’d had a nervous breakdown. He’d read the psych eval. Someone in her state was barely aware of her surroundings and here she’d caught him.
But goddamn. What betrayed him was that she was a freaking looker. He had a weakness for the ladies. Isabel Delvaux was a little on the scrawny side but fuck. Big eyes, big pouty mouth. Surprisingly large boobs for a thin chick. A guy’d have to be dead not to notice. Kearns wasn’t dead. Not even close. And his cock worked just fine.
He had a low-level contract to keep an eye on the Delvaux woman who’d changed her name and moved to Portland. It was boring work because the chick never did anything. And the pay wasn’t good because it was goddamned scut work. Nothing a half-assed snot-nosed newbie couldn’t hack.
Watching a clueless woman was demeaning work. Kearns had taken it only because he was working his way up this new hierarchy he’d sensed was doing big-time stuff. Big-time stuff meant big-time money and he needed it. He’d blown the money from his last big contract in Vegas. He was flat-out broke and he wanted in on whatever it was that was happening. He’d put out the word that he was available and he’d gotten a bite within forty-eight hours.
He hadn’t expected to watch a chick day after day, doing nothing but taking slow walks in the mornings and cooking and reading in the afternoons, from what he could see.
Another guy followed her at times, walked slowly with her at others. Her next-door neighbor. Kearns checked the name, and when he checked in military databases the hairs rose on the back of his neck when he saw the guy was a former SEAL. Those guy
s didn’t fuck around and Kearns was no match for him in a fight unless he took him from behind.
And even then. The guy had been wounded—he had scars and he’d walked with a cane for a few days then threw it away. Wounded or not, though, he had that situational awareness the specops guys were born with and then had the gift pounded into them.
You didn’t take SEALs by surprise.
He stopped day surveillance when he read that Joe Harris was a SEAL. Kearns didn’t report that the Delvaux bitch had a SEAL living next door. Either he’d lose the gig altogether or he’d be replaced, and though it wasn’t much money it was easy money.
So he didn’t follow her around anymore in the daytime beyond the occasional drive-by. He checked in on her at night. Easier, simpler.
And got a real perk. Shit yeah. She looked scrawny when dressed but when she walked around naked, oh yeah. Everything a woman needed, she had. Instead of bony, she was delicate with perfect tits.
She wasn’t sleeping with the SEAL. She was alone at night. Though Kearns did wonder what the SEAL was thinking not fucking a babe like her. Shit, the SEAL was following her around like some goddamned puppy, why not bone her?
Whatever.
The SEAL wasn’t boning her so she was always alone at night with no one watching. So Kearns developed a routine, two, three times a week. He had a Tyvek oversuit in his car, special boots that left no prints, latex gloves, a mask and night vision gear. He knew the outside of the house like his own hand. There was a walkway that went past her bedroom. The Tyvek suit would leave no cloth samples, not even a thread and there was no possibility of DNA should he get caught on a bush. The mask covered his face. And the NV gave him a view he wouldn’t forget in a hurry.
The big problem was not jerking off in the bushes. That would leave DNA. It was really hard, about as hard as his cock when he watched her coming out of the shower toweling her hair dry.
The NV gave everything a greenish glow so he couldn’t see the color of her muff but it was light-colored, like her nipples. Mmm.
So Kearns spent a couple of nights a week looking into her house at night then going back to his miserable cheap motel room to jerk off. And he sent reports on her behavior—a whole lot of nothing, which was what his employer wanted to hear.
Kearns got it loud and clear that the more Isabel Delvaux stayed away from the world, the better it was. Kearns also got it that his reports were making someone happy.
So the last Delvaux was supposed to stay sick and sad and under the radar. Not stir up any waves. Fine.
The only thing she stirred up was his dick.
It was a disaster that he’d been made. Kearns realized he’d strayed a little from the walkway to get a better look. Who could blame him? She was a wet dream. And a Delvaux. They were like Kennedys, only better-looking.
He was absolutely certain he’d left nothing behind, but that big guy next door had come running to the bitch’s door when she screamed. He was barefoot but amazingly fast. And he came out again fast, but by that time, Kearns’s Tyvek suit was off and he was in sweats and a hoodie, opening his car door. He drove by the house slowly and the big guy was checking the ground with a flashlight. A Maglite that lit everything up.
A sheen of sweat blossomed all over Kearns. The SEAL was looking very closely. Kearns had been careful. Hadn’t he? A trickle of sweat rolled down the side of his face because—who the fuck remembered? He’d been enjoying the bitch’s little show that had seemed designed for him. He’d been avidly soaking up every single goddamn detail because she was going to feature large that night in his bed.
Man, he’d never had a piece that fine. Long legs, long pale neck. A mouth made to go down on a guy. On him. Oh yeah, he could imagine it so easily. All that dark honey hair swirling around his hands as he held her in place, pumping in and out of that mouth.
That moment—when he could almost feel her lips around his cock—that was the exact moment her flashlight picked him out. He was jerked harshly out of the fantasy that had been so real he had major wood. His hand been reaching for his groin when the white light had blinded him. He’d snatched the NV goggles off his face but it was too late. He’d lost his sight, temporarily.
Good thing he knew his way around the yard so well his feet carried him out of there without having to think.
But he didn’t remember much between the moment he’d been blinded and when he stumbled out onto the street, tearing off his ski mask and unzipping the suit. He fell into his SUV and pulled out too fast and then, heart still beating, decided to go around the block and see what was happening.
That was when he saw the SEAL searching the ground and for the first time it occurred to him that he could be busted. That’s when his heart started triphammering because he knew the guy he worked for wasn’t warm and fuzzy. Wasn’t the forgiving type.
He didn’t dare make another turn of the block so he drove back to the motel from hell, sweating and swearing, slamming the steering wheel in frustration. And still hard, goddamn it.
Reason kicked in. This Isabel babe was unstable. And a Delvaux. Rich high-born assholes, all of them. Never done an honest day’s job in their lives. Not like him.
And Isabel? A flake. She could’ve done anything she wanted but what did she want to do? Fucking cook. Like his mom. She didn’t do her cooking in a diner that smelled of rancid grease and old socks with the toilets smelling of sex and shit, sure, but cooking was cooking.
She’d survived the Massacre but turned loony. So who was going to believe that she saw someone outside her window? The SEAL would look and look, but wouldn’t find anything, no footprints, no stray threads caught in the bushes, nothing disturbed. That banshee scream was a hysterical woman who saw monsters under the bed.
As a matter of fact, Kearns was so sure he hadn’t been seen by anyone but a hysterical woman, he wasn’t going to report this. No, sir. Why should he? His reports had been coming in regularly, a guy who was doing his duty, watching her movements. She did absolutely nothing suspicious or even interesting.
So right now he’d be crazy to report the truth. I get tired of watching her do fuckall so I watch her at night when she gets naked, then go to the crap motel to jerk off. And tonight I might have gotten caught. By her neighbor. Who’s a fucking Navy SEAL.
Nope. Not going to happen.
He’d report that Isabel Delvaux, now Isabel Lawton, was continuing her boring routine. Going for walks and cooking. Cooking and going for walks.
Nothing to see here, folks, just move right along.
Chapter Five
Joe hadn’t kissed a woman in—shit. Two years? Three? The last one had been—he blanked. Oh yeah, the lawyer from hell. It had been a one-night stand because she’d scared the shit out of him with her aggression. He’d crept out the next morning with his balls crawling up into his groin out of fear.
He’d been in the freaking Sandbox so long, operating out of remote FOBs with no women but the poor souls covered head to toe in blankets, he’d almost forgotten women existed. Sex was with his fist and that got real old, real fast. So he concentrated on staying alive and he almost didn’t manage it. And man, after being blown up, whoa. That was when sex disappeared from his life.
The only women he’d seen with any regularity were the nurses who wiped his butt and the surgeon. He’d seen her exactly twice. Everyone said she was a miracle worker and his bones could attest to that. But she was fifty with a bun of gray hair and was not dream material.
So he’d sort of forgotten how great women were. Soft everywhere. Soft mouth, soft breasts, soft skin. And Isabel—he couldn’t remember a woman as enticing as Isabel.
He touched his mouth to Isabel’s, his first kiss in two or three years, and he nearly came. He tightened his ass cheeks because coming on the couch, wetting his thin sweatpants, would be super uncool.
Isabel could feel everything he was feeling. He slept commando so when he’d heard her scream he’d grabbed his gun first and then hopped into his sweatpa
nts in less than a second and ran out the door. Barefoot, bare-chested, thinking only to get to her as fast as humanly possible.
So now he was on her couch, cradling Isabel in his arms and she could feel every single thing about him, particularly the hard-on. Which was the hardest hard-on he could ever remember having.
And the kiss was the very best he could ever remember sharing. She was so soft all over, including her mouth. He lost himself in it, forgetting everything, just diving into her, feeling her warm and open in his arms.
When he finally lifted his head, he nearly lost it at the sight of her. So amazingly beautiful, hair mussed from his hands, mouth swollen from his mouth.
“I care what happens to you,” he said. He didn’t want her to think of herself for even a second more as being completely alone in the world.
“I know,” she whispered, watching his eyes. She could watch his eyes all she wanted, she’d see nothing but the truth. She cupped his jaw and lifted her face to him again. This time the kiss was deeper, hotter and control slipped a little from his hands.
Control.
She was fragile, breakable. Joe had to have control and he usually did, damn it. Except now, when he needed it most.
He was trying to map out a strategy to get her to the bedroom though his thoughts were cloudy. Kiss her some more. Maybe ask if she wanted him to stay the night, maybe sleep on her couch, though that would be sheer hell. Sleeping on a couch while the woman he desired more than his next breath slept a room away.
But he was a SEAL. He could do that. Stay over tomorrow night, too, and the night after that. And then maybe he could convince her to...
“Take me to bed, Joe,” she murmured and it was like a lightning bolt shot through his system. He rose with her in his arms and went into her bedroom, fast.